Becoming Self-Aware requires that you master recognizing your ego and that you understand ego is a functional part of your mind, instead of the essence of who you are. The challenge of being aware of your ego is that your mind has been programmed to believe it (ego) is you.
Every one constructs a personal identity as part of normal human development. You need an identity to be able to learn to function in the world and, recognize yourself as a unique distinct person. Once you know how to function the importance of your identity changes, it becomes less important. What allows the transformation of your humanity into expressing true greatness is letting go of your attachment to a fixed personal identity. Instead you identify with the dynamic presence of your Being. Your personal identity perceives everything as separate while presence of being knows the essence of everything is interconnected.
What is ego?
The human ego is the leading edge of biological evolution. Ego carries out life’s mandate to survive danger by adapting to adverse environmental conditions. From plants to bacteria to humans, all living organisms are endowed with intelligence to learn to respond to external circumstances, your ego is an expert at this. Learning involves having the capacity for memory. You must remember what hurts and what feels good! Memory records what supports life and what doesn’t.
Ego is the animal nature in humans that has learned to survive external hostility through aggression, competition and being territorial. Ego’s aggression arises in order to protect itself and, “get” what is needed to survive. Your ego is not your enemy! The level of tenacity with which your ego embodies its inherent traits determines your success in physically surviving dangerous circumstances and, providing for what you need to live. You also benefit from developing a strong enough personality to not be pushed around in social interactions.
What is your ego identity?
Your ego identity is a series of core beliefs (self-definitions) that also function as a defense/protection mechanism. Now that you have a technical description let’s acknowledge the obvious: your ego identity is who you think you are as well as familiar feelings and emotions you identify with yourself. One of the most familiar and unconscious (out of awareness) emotions that confirm everyone’s ego identity is nervous anxiety.
Your ego identity is a mental and emotional construct held together by core beliefs. A belief is a firmly held opinion that is taken as truth. Beliefs are necessary to build a workable understanding of life, explain your relationship to people and develop a way to recognize who you are, during childhood. Beliefs are unquestioned assumptions that are taken for granted. In contrast, knowingness emerges from common sense wisdom. Knowingness is derived directly from experiences once the brain has fully developed and, abstract reasoning is available and functioning well. Children believe beliefs while adults have the capacity to Know, provided they are psychologically matured.
Core beliefs are primitive (before reason and logic are possible), interpretations of repeated experiences that left a strong painful or pleasurable impression during childhood. Beliefs arbitrarily assign meaning to experiences. A child needs to understand why something happens in order to repeat it, if it feels good, or avoid it if it hurts. Core beliefs are instructions for how to behave in specific familiar situations. For more information regarding the impact of core beliefs read, “what if your beliefs are wrong” article.
When is the ego identity constructed? Ego development parallels the physiological development of the body. The ego identity begins around two years of age when the child understands simple language and the child begins to associate names with objects, including the body. The ego identity solidifies as a mental structure around 7 to 9 years old.
What is the personality?
The personality is a mental “protective” shell that guards the delicate, pure, innocent essence that humans are when they are young. It is assembled by associating positive and negative self images inside a core self–concept, a core belief the child has acquired about who she is. For example, “I am a good girl” is a positive self-image that is attached to a negative self-image such as “I’m stupid”.
The mind “thinks” in pictures. A self-concept is an inner picture that literally represents how the child sees themselves in relationship to their parents and other caretaker.
Building a personality is an intricate process beyond what I can describe here. What is important to know is that it functions mechanically like a machine. The instructions for this machine are contained in the core beliefs that make up the ego identity. Each core belief generates an emotional atmosphere representative of the many similar experiences that created it. The collective core belief “I’m not good enough” has the common origin of a child being criticized harshly many times. This form of devaluing is a judgment against how they perform a task or a tendency for cruel comparisons to others or simply criticizing the child for just being themselves. All these different attacks generate painful shame and humiliation. This treatment conditions the child to react by adjusting her behavior and meet her parent expectations. The end result is internalizing their idea of “how she should and should not be.”
The personality produces a fragmented existence
Before a child develops the protective shield of a personality they are a powerful authentic being with no hidden agendas. Once the personality takes over behavior self-expression is unnatural. The terrible twos are an example of how difficult it is for both children and parents to agree on rules of behavior. However the civilizing process unfolds, the child is forced to suppress their emotions and do as they are told.
When a child is not given any rules they become aggressive because they don’t have a boundary to push against and know whom they are. Children need to learn what is acceptable behavior in their community. A child conforms by learning what is to him a very unnatural behavior.
This process, which goes on for a few years, leaves profound emotional wounds.
The shadow self
Every personality contains within it fragments of disowned ego identity. These fragments consist of negative self-images that compete for control of behavior against positive self-images. The shadow is made up of repressed strong emotions including overwhelming sorrow and grief, paralyzing terror, deep-seated hatred, rage, and fury.
During periods of high stress or prolonged crisis the normal ego defenses weaken and the ego gets out of its own control. When the shadow takes over all kinds of self-sabotage are acted out. The most normal is telling lies and withholding information and other forms of self-deception including fun-hunger (one my personal favorites), where a drive to resist responsibility is acted out by an appetite for feeling good activities.
When too much pain has been suppressed this internal crisis becomes normal and people’s behavior becomes continually self-destructive. Examples of these are addictions of all kinds including addiction to dysfunctional relationships where misery is the normal atmosphere. What cover these painful emotional states are acceptable unauthentic fits of hurt, fear and anger. This is the mechanical acting out of pseudo-emotions. You know, when people get instantly sad or insecure or angry and appear to be out of control except it happens regularly.
The aware ego
Just as the body is endowed with self-organizing intelligence that knows how to repair and heal itself so does your mind. Within you live a knowingness of harmony and peace. It may start as a faint whisper of hope that awakens a remembrance that there is more to life than meaningless suffering and false happiness.
Your ego’s tenacity can be inspired by the presence of your Being, the higher Self, to transform suffering through forgiveness and a willingness to listen to the inner guidance of your common sense. The aware ego responds by engaging in the path of personal development and emotional integration. When your ego surrenders control of its life to something greater than itself, it has emerged out of complete unconsciousness and entered the path towards Self-awareness. The aware ego is a stage of personal development where your desire to overcome limitations and experience love changes you. This stage inspires you to learn to take responsibility for your thoughts, emotions and behavior. The aware ego is characterized by pursuing access to the presence of unconditional love within you.